Tuesday, 29 June 2010

Today is the 90th birthday of one of the masters of cinema: Ray Harryhausen, the man whose mastery of stop-frame animation began with the King Kong-esque Mighty Joe Young in 1949 and which led him to develop the technique known as Dynamation, by which animated models were integrated with live action.

Among his masterworks of animation that were part of a generation's childhood and adolescence and which inspired the careers of a diversity of cinematic talents including Peter Jackson, Nick Park and Terry Gilliam were The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1952) based on a short story by Ray Harryhausen's friend (and mine) Ray Bradbury who will be celebrating his 90th birthday in two months time, 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Mysterious Island (1961), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), One Million Years BC (1966), The Valley of Gwangi (1969), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) and Clash of the Titans (1981).

To celebrate this remarkable milestone, Ray opened a new exhibition, Ray Harryhausen - Myths & Legends, at The London Film Museum, filled with many of the amazing miniature creatures from his mythological zoo, including Cyclops, Medusa and Pegusus as well as giant scorpions, skeletal warriors and assorted dinosaurs.

The aforementioned Jackson and Gilliam were there to pay homage, as were make-up supremo, Rick (An American Werewolf in London) Baker, visual effects guru Randy (The Lord of the Rings) Cook, director John (The Twilight Zone: The Movie) Landis and quite a number of lesser mortals...

And here are just a few of Ray's wondrous children...

The exhibition, Ray Harryhausen - Myths & Legends continues at The London Film Museum, County Hall, Riverside Building next to London Eye, South Bank, London SE1 7PB. Read more about Ray Harryhausen at The Official Website

Monday, 28 June 2010

After several blog posts about multi-coloured elephants, I give you by way of a change --- a purple cow walking through a plate-glass window to advertise the amusements and entertainments on offer at London's South Bank 'fringe' event, Udderbelly...

It was, as you can see, a shattering experience even to someone familiar with the various alarms and diversions commonly met with on South Bank.

Naturally - or, perhaps, unnaturally - this biliously-hued bovine brought to mind the famous verse written by American poet, artist and critic (right)Gelett Burgess.

Published on 1 May, 1895, in the first issue of the monthly magazine, The Lark...

The poem almost immediately passed into public consciousness, so that, two years later, in the April 1897 edition of The Lark, Burgess published 'Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue':

Ah, yes, I wrote the "Purple Cow"—I'm Sorry, now, I wrote it;But I can tell you AnyhowI'll Kill you if you Quote it!

Since impersonation is - or so they say - the sincerest form of flattery, it is a testament to the popularity of Burgess's short, but witty, ditty that it has been so frequently parodied.

Of the many purple cow pastiches, these are a couple of my favourites:

I've never seen a purple cowMy eyes with tears are fullI've never seen a purple cowAnd I'm a purple bull.

I've never seen a purple cow.I never hope to see one.But from the milk we're getting now,There certainly must be one!

Even Ogden Nash, the twentieth century's greatest writer of light verse (a sweeping statement there, based on personal prejudice!) paid tribute to Gelett Burgess and his purple cow with this little ode:

I've never seen an abominable snowman,I'm hoping not to see one,I'm also hoping, if I do,That it will be a wee one.

The Purple Cow has also inspired a drink (vodka and grape juice), an ice-cream (raspberry with chocolate and white chocolate chips), a grape-flavoured taffy lollipop and a chain of burger restaurants in the Southern USA. What's more, a purple cow (named, incidentally, Ephelia) happens to be the mascot of Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Friday, 25 June 2010

The Toy Dolls singing 'Nellie the Elephant' on Top of the Pops back in 1985. Of course, I'm so ancient that I can cast my mind back almost thirty years earlier to the original 1956 recording of Ralph Butler and Peter Hart's song as perfprmed by twelve-year old Mandy Miller.

The version, however, is immaterial since I include it here as a farewell trumpet-call to mark the fact that the pachyderms of Elephant Parade London 2010 are packing their trunks and preparing to head off into the sunset with a trumpety-trump, trump-trump-trump!

Their extinction (at least their disappearance from their various sites around the city) began last Sunday but you can view the herd at the Royal Hospital Chelsea today and tomorrow and Wednesday 28 June. Admission is free and is from 10am to 7pm. Meanwhile the indoor herd can currently be viewed at Westfield Shopping Centre, where they will remain until Wednesday 30 June.

And so, as the parade passes by, here's a farewell tribute featuring some of my favourite elephantasies...

Photo: Sophie Walpole

Photo: David Weeks

Photo: Sophie Walpole

Photo: David Weeks

You can find out more about this art-event-cum-fund-raising project by visiting Elephant Family; and you can see the newly extended Sibley herd (with guest contributions from Sophie Walpole and David Weeks) on my Elephant Parade flickr Album.

Left Bust: "Is that supposed to be Liam Neeson?"SECOND PLACEBOLL WEAVIL

Left Bust: I've been looking at this picture above us for a couple of hundred years or so...can you make out what it's supposed to be?"

THIRD PLACE

SHARON MAILLeft Bust: "What do you think of the new iPad, then?"Middle Bust: "I'm waiting to see if it comes downin price."Right Bust: "Even if it does, it might prove a bit trickyhaving to operate it with our noses."

Far left Bust is saying, "I mean obviously there was the big payday, and hosting both GMTV and their World Cup coverage meant that ginger git wasn’t getting in on my action. But what you forget is that once you leave Auntie your career goes bust and you end up on the shelf... Is that really Frank Bough?"

SUZANNE

Left Bust: "Who goosed me?"

SHEILA

Bust on left to bust in the middle: "It would be a kindness for one of us to tell him about it - since I started using Head and Shoulders shampoo I've never had dandruff."

Left Bust: "Who is that guy? He's been here every day for the past week, just standing there going 'Friends, Romans, countrymen'?"Middle Bust: "I dunno, some guy called Will..."Right Bust: "Just stare him out fellas, he'll soon give up"

Left Bust: "Why do you always have to do different? We said no beards"

Saturday, 19 June 2010

"The universe is big and vast and complicated and ridiculous..." announced Doctor Who in tonight's twelfth and very complicated episode. No spoilers, I promise, but the words TO BE CONTINUED have rarely had more riding on riding on them!

Meanwhile, if you haven't seen them yet, here are the eleven incarnations of --- Doctor Hoo as seen by M Dyer on pu-sama's deviantART site...

Click to enlarge

Thanks to the good little bird who told me about them --- well, actually, more of a Good (Bird) Dog!

Friday, 18 June 2010

Wandering round exhibitions can certainly be tiring, but weary culture-vultures at Tate Britain can currently take a breather by sitting on Winston Churchill sitting on Adolf Hitler...

The Churchill-Hitler seat was designed by Gerald Scarfe for Rude Britannia: British Comic Art which opened at the Tate last week and runs until 5 September. Incidentally, the cigar-smoking, Churchillian bulldog (masquerading as Winnie's frequent companion 'The Black Dog' of depression) was added later to stop unwary visitors from bumping into Adolf's zeich heiling left arm!

Of course, Tate Britain the depository of over five centuries of British art, is no stranger to rudery as can be seen from the shortlist to most Turner Prize shows. But this time it's letting its hair down and having a bit a laugh, albeit often with serious intent, over what many would categorise as ephemera - newspaper cartoons, comics, saucy postcards - interspersed with examples of modern art.

The critics have almost universally complained that there aren't enough chuckles or guffaws and maybe that's true, but the work of masters of the caricature - from Rowlandson (above), Gilray, Hogarth and Cruickshank through to Scrafe, Steadman, Steve Bell and Martin Rowson - are all proof that the pen, when dipped in the vitriolic ink of satire, can be far mightier than the sword.

What the Tate has provided is an opportunity for cartoonists (the aforementioned Scarfe and Bell together with the creators of Viz and the comedian, Harry Hill) to assist in curating an exhibition that is sometimes so disturbing that laughter is impossible as with Peter Kennard and Cat Picton Phillips' Photo-Op...

In truth, much of what is shown here is shocking, but there are also moments to have a chuckle whether it be in the pages of the Beano or in naively provocative paintings by the always delicious Beryl Cook, whose Ladies Night(right) shows a gaggle of giggling, gawping, girls enjoying a raucous night on the town.

Keeping Beryl's ladies company are the cads, curates, old maids and bathing belles peopling the seaside postcards created by that master of sauciness, Donald McGill, whose work during the 1950s was regularly the subject of obscenity prosecutions in holiday resorts the length and breadth of Britain.

A Stick of Rock, Cock?

The day I went to see the show, there were several distinguished visitors looking around...

Maybe it wasn't actually her, but she was certainly her 'Spitting Image'! Or, there again, perhaps it was her and that's why strange, blue, prehistoric (or, perhaps, mythological) birds of prey were circling overhead...

You can hear my full views on Rude Britannia (well, quite a few of them, anyway) when I'll be discussing the exhibition with Claudia Winkleman on BBC Radio 2's Arts Show tonight at around 11:30 pm. The programme will also feature a conversation I had with Gerald Scarfe, one of my all-time cartoon heroes, when we sat awhile on Mr Churchill and Herr Hitler...